As the left prides itself on its supposed “anti-imperialism”, I find it highly amusing to observe a full-blown case of lefty imperialism that’s been with us unnoticed for many years and is still, apparently, going strong. What am I referring to?

The ongoing, ridiculous, persistent idea that the United States always needs to “get troops from Europe”.

You’ve heard this many times I’m sure. Obviously as regards Afghanistan in Iraq. And it’s come up again most recently with Obama going and asking for troops for Afghanistan. It’s just amazing to me that a standard left-wing viewpoint is that the United States should “get troops from Europe” to help us in these endeavors.

Talk about imperialism! What, is Europe our colony?

Call me crazy but I think the nations of Europe are sovereign nations with rights of their own. As such, they may or may not want to contribute their troops to this or that endeavor of ours, depending on their perceived self-interest, and you know what? I respect that.

You know what else? The left doesn’t. To the left, if the U.S. is engaging in a war somewhere (say, Afghanistan), and French soldiers aren’t involved, there’s something wrong that needs to be fixed. I look at the situation and think “well, that’s their right”. The left thinks, “oh no! We must not have asked France nicely enough. We must have done something wrong. So we should keep asking! Ask better! Change our leadership, then ask again!”

For crying out loud, can’t we take “no” for an answer? We’re like stalkers.

At this point I’m not even sure I understand what Europe has to do with anything in the first place. (And this applies to more topics than simply the war on terror.) Let’s review: the U.S. was attacked by groups based in Afghanistan. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan. This necessarily involves, interests, or has to do with “Europe” how, exactly? I mean, I’ve seen a world map. Europe is not in the U.S. nor is it in Afghanistan. Why aren’t we having all these discussions about, oh I don’t know, Brazil? Why hasn’t the left glommed on to “get troops from Brazil” as their cause celebre? You got me. It would make just about as much sense.

So I can’t even begin to fathom what sort of mindset it must take to see (1) the U.S. fighting against forces in (2) Afghanistan and automatically jump to “where are the (3) French soldiers? we gotta get some French soldiers!” The logic behind (1) + (2) -> (3) simply escapes me. I must not have drunk that particular batch of Kool-Aid.

My theory is that Obama and the left don’t even remember or know why it’s so important to them to “get troops from Europe” for this thing. It’s not something they want to accomplish because of some end they think it will help them to achieve. It’s something they feel like they have to pretend to care about in order to carry through with their original criticism of Bush, that he didn’t “get” (enough) “troops from Europe”. This is kabuki geopolitics, going through the motions for appearances’ sake. The goal, as always, is PR: to prove that Obama is “better than Bush”. I suspect Obama is essentially asking Europe to contribute troops to him in order to make the “Bush didn’t get enough troops” criticism not seem quite as idiotic as it always was.